Have You Really Played Metal Gear?

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If you only played it on the NES, you're missing out.

By Levi Buchanan

Certainly, Metal Gear fans have spent this week rejoicing the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, either by playing the game itself or scheming to find the scratch to score the necessary PlayStation 3 to do so. The franchise has cultivated fans for no less than 21 years, starting in summer of 1987 as a release for the popular Japanese home computer MSX2. The following year, the game was ported to the NES, which launched the series across Pacific Ocean.

The game was heralded as a new kind of action game, driven by a mature narrative and the introduction of stealth mechanics in the hardware generation that was driven primarily by arcade ports and colorful platformers. The game was a success in America, leading to the launch of a series that extended across several consoles over the next 20 years.

When the original Metal Gear arrived on the NES, publisher Konami approved a number of changes to the game that ended up disappointing series creator Hideo Kojima. The alterations were both cosmetic and mechanical. While every gamer can appreciate the basic visual changes from the MSX2 version, such as color and texture swaps, there are troubling narrative changes. Beyond the humorous translation snafus which marked many NES releases of the era -- "The truck have started to move!" -- American audiences were condescended to with the decision to change the final bad guy, the leader of Outer Heaven, to a bastardization of Reagan Era nemesis Muammar al-Gaddafi: Colonel Cataffy. Apparently, it was determined at some point that American gamers would not cotton to an enemy that was actually a U.S. Special Forces agent.

Obviously, times have changed.

The opening scene of Metal Gear. (MSX2, left; NES, right)

But it wasn't just the poor translation and the narrative changes that dismayed Kojima. An entirely new opening sequence was added to the NES port of Metal Gear. Instead of arriving by water, Snake skydives into a jungle and must fight through several enemy troops in order to reach a transport truck. That truck then takes Snake to the base. Mazes were added as obstacles between the buildings within the fortress.

In an interview with Steven Kent on the now-defunct site Gamerstoday, Kojima also pointed to the addition of merciless dogs at the fortress entrance as another disappointment. According to Kojima: "It [the Famicom version] was a more difficult game. In the very beginning, when you go from the entrance into the fortress, for example, there are dogs there. In the Famicom version, the dogs just come after you and you get killed. It was too difficult to get into the fortress."

Footage of Metal Gear on the MSX2.

But perhaps the most egregious alteration is the actual removal of Metal Gear itself. As most gamers undoubtedly now know, the Metal Gear is a mech. But in the NES port, the robot has been replaced with a super-computer guarded by a small handful of soldiers? What, did somebody think we would scoff at a robot? If any audience is going to be wholly accepting of giant war robots, it's videogame fans.

Meeting Metal Gear. (MSX2, left; NES, right)

If you have only played the NES version of Metal Gear, you truly owe it to yourself to play Kojima's original vision. And it's not too difficult to do so now. Not only is the MSX2 version of Metal Gear included as a bonus with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, but it is also available on your mobile phone in a very good port.